Making My Hobby Site Work For Me

Just over a year ago, I started jettlandicho.com with the intention of it being my professional presence on the Internet. I planned to create content that I would be proud to show advertising industry professionals, advertising students, my mom or anyone that happened to Google my name. In an era where every employer will use the Internet to know everything there is to know about prospective hires, I wanted to make everything they found awesome. Outside of that joke Amazon.com review written in my name (thanks, Ahmed), I think I have done a decent job of taking control of the 'Jett Landicho brand'.

A few months after jettlandicho.com launched, I started another site. It's origin story was completely different. It was created as an outlet to express my thoughts and feelings in regards to a life-long hobby of mine. I intentionally didn't tell anyone I knew about the site for a number of reasons:

1) Employers probably don't care about my hobby
2) My friends don't care about my hobby like I do
3) I wanted to see how my 'anonymous' Internet effort would perform without my name attached to it

While I think points one and two still stand, I think there are some positives to be had from claiming this other site as mine. Should you be interested in my personal project and the rationale for 'outing' it, read the rest of this post.



About the Site

In Third Person is a video game blog. I may not have the credentials of IGN, Gamespot or Ice-T, but it's the only place to get video game thoughts and opinions from yours truly. I try and write everything as personable and relatable as possible so that I can provide you with a compelling third person perspective on everything relating to video games. If you value what I have to say about games, awesome. If you don't, you're more than welcome to disagree with me in the comments.

Why In Third Person Matters to Me

I love video games. I've been actively playing games for over 20 years. I've been actively following the scene and the culture since the early days of Electronic Gaming Monthly. There are a lot of thoughts and experiences I've always wanted to share but never had the outlet to express myself. This may sound cheesy, but I think having this outlet has been good for my soul. This project was birthed out of my love for video games and I hope it comes through in my work.

Why It Might Matter to You

Most of the jettlandicho.com traffic comes from potential employers looking for background information on me and from advertising students who know me through Seneca College's Creative Advertising program. Odds are, if you're in the first audience, you probably don't care about video games. I understand that.

What might be relevant to you is that In Third Person is another example of my ability to work with blogs and, in particular, the Wordpress platform. I'm still fine-tuning the blog to get the right template and plug-ins, but I know how to use it and I use this all the time. Feel free to judge me based on my ability express thoughts and ideas through interactive and social technologies.

I am also putting this out there as another means for someone to learn more about me as a person. jettlandicho.com was partially made to compensate for my lack of interactive advertising experience and my lack of a professional presence on the web. A year later, I'm fortunate to have a number of interactive and social media projects under my belt. When the time comes, I can always speak to that experience and to this blog.

Throughout this past year of working in advertising, I've also learned about the value in personality. Opportunities can be made or lost based my personality and how I would mesh with others. While who I am is framed mainly within the context of video games, I think a lot about who I am as a person shines through.

In Conclusion

In Third Person is my gaming blog that is independent of the work I do on jettlandicho.com. I'm just as proud of the content on In Third Person as I am of the content here. If you enjoy video games or just want to learn a bit more about me, head over there right now.